Hi I need to get the name (only name) of the last updated file or directory in an existing folder and store it in a variable. Thanks in advance.

I am assuming that the objects in your existing folder are only files and directories. #!/bin/ksh cd <your existing folder> myvar=$(ls -1t|while read obj do echo $obj break done) echo $myvar

lastfile=`ls -1tr | tail -n 1` would give the last updated file or directory in the current directory, and store it in variable

Thanks for the help, appreciate if you pls let me know - I need to copy files from the existing non-empty folder to existing empty folder (created recently). Thanks.

Is that a new request, or does it relate to the previous question ? Just use CP, no ?

Hi But how would I check the latest empty folder and non empty folder. I need to write a scrip, first to check the non empty folder and copy files from there to latest empty folder. Thanks in advance.

That's a totally different question than the one from the initial post ! And also, somewhat more difficult. So, you need to know the name of the latest non-empty directory ? One way would be to explicitally create one ... but that may not be acceptable as a solution. I'll have a think